Abstract: Project selection problems on management
information system (MIS) are often considered a multi-criteria
decision-making (MCDM) for a solving method. These problems
contain two aspects, such as interdependencies among criteria and
candidate projects and qualitative and quantitative factors of projects.
However, most existing methods reported in literature consider these
aspects separately even though these two aspects are simultaneously
incorporated. For this reason, we proposed a hybrid method using
analytic network process (ANP) and fuzzy logic in order to represent
both aspects. We then propose a goal programming model to conduct
an optimization for the project selection problems interpreted by a
hybrid concept. Finally, a numerical example is conducted as
verification purposes.
Abstract: Technology of thin film deposition is of interest in
many engineering fields, from electronic manufacturing to corrosion
protective coating. A typical deposition process, like that developed
at the University of Eindhoven, considers the deposition of a thin,
amorphous film of C:H or of Si:H on the substrate, using the
Expanding Thermal arc Plasma technique. In this paper a computing
procedure is proposed to simulate the flow field in a deposition
chamber similar to that at the University of Eindhoven and a
sensitivity analysis is carried out in terms of: precursor mass flow
rate, electrical power, supplied to the torch and fluid-dynamic
characteristics of the plasma jet, using different nozzles. To this
purpose a deposition chamber similar in shape, dimensions and
operating parameters to the above mentioned chamber is considered.
Furthermore, a method is proposed for a very preliminary evaluation
of the film thickness distribution on the substrate. The computing
procedure relies on two codes working in tandem; the output from
the first code is the input to the second one. The first code simulates
the flow field in the torch, where Argon is ionized according to the
Saha-s equation, and in the nozzle. The second code simulates the
flow field in the chamber. Due to high rarefaction level, this is a
(commercial) Direct Simulation Monte Carlo code. Gas is a mixture
of 21 chemical species and 24 chemical reactions from Argon plasma
and Acetylene are implemented in both codes. The effects of the
above mentioned operating parameters are evaluated and discussed
by 2-D maps and profiles of some important thermo-fluid-dynamic
parameters, as per Mach number, velocity and temperature. Intensity,
position and extension of the shock wave are evaluated and the
influence of the above mentioned test conditions on the film
thickness and uniformity of distribution are also evaluated.
Abstract: We propose an enhanced collaborative filtering
method using Hofstede-s cultural dimensions, calculated for 111
countries. We employ 4 of these dimensions, which are correlated to
the costumers- buying behavior, in order to detect users- preferences
for items. In addition, several advantages of this method
demonstrated for data sparseness and cold-start users, which are
important challenges in collaborative filtering. We present
experiments using a real dataset, Book Crossing Dataset.
Experimental results shows that the proposed algorithm provide
significant advantages in terms of improving recommendation
quality.
Abstract: In this paper, three dimensional flow characteristic was
presented by a revision of an impeller of an axial turbo fan for
improving the airflow rate and the static pressure. TO consider an
incompressible steady three-dimensional flow, the RANS equations
are used as the governing equations, and the standard k-ε turbulence
model is chosen. The pitch angles of 44°, 54°, 59°, and 64° are
implemented for the numerical model. The numerical results show that
airflow rates of each pitch angle are 1,175 CMH, 1,270 CMH, 1,340
CMH, and 800 CMH, respectively. The difference of the static
pressure at impeller inlet and outlet are 120 Pa, 214 Pa, 242 Pa, and 60
Pa according to respective pitch angles. It means that the 59° of the
impeller pitch angle is optimal to improve the airflow rate and the
static pressure.
Abstract: The accelerated growth in aircraft industries desire
effectual schemes, programs, innovative designs of advanced systems
to accomplishing the augmenting need for home-free air
transportation. In this paper, a contemporary conceptual design of an
airplane has been proposed without landing gear systems in order to
reducing accidents, time consumption, and to eliminating drawbacks
by using superconducting levitation phenomenon. This invention of
an airplane with superconductive material coating, on the solar plexus
region assist to reduce weight by approximately 4% of the total takeoff
weight, and cost effective. Moreover, we conjectured that
superconductor landing system reduces ground friction, mission fuel,
total drag, take-off and landing distance.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to develop models that would enable predicting student success. These models could improve allocation of students among colleges and optimize the newly introduced model of government subsidies for higher education. For the purpose of collecting data, an anonymous survey was carried out in the last year of undergraduate degree student population using random sampling method. Decision trees were created of which two have been chosen that were most successful in predicting student success based on two criteria: Grade Point Average (GPA) and time that a student needs to finish the undergraduate program (time-to-degree). Decision trees have been shown as a good method of classification student success and they could be even more improved by increasing survey sample and developing specialized decision trees for each type of college. These types of methods have a big potential for use in decision support systems.
Abstract: In today-s information age, numbers of organizations
are still arguing on capitalizing the values of Information Technology
(IT) and Knowledge Management (KM) to which individuals can
benefit from and effective communication among the individuals can
be established. IT exists in enabling positive improvement for
communication among knowledge workers (k-workers) with a
number of social network technology domains at workplace. The
acceptance of digital discourse in sharing of knowledge and
facilitating the knowledge and information flows at most of the
organizations indeed impose the culture of knowledge sharing in
Digital Social Networks (DSN). Therefore, this study examines
whether the k-workers with IT background would confer an effect on
the three knowledge characteristics -- conceptual, contextual, and
operational. Derived from these three knowledge characteristics, five
potential factors will be examined on the effects of knowledge
exchange via e-mail domain as the chosen query. It is expected, that
the results could provide such a parameter in exploring how DSN
contributes in supporting the k-workers- virtues, performance and
qualities as well as revealing the mutual point between IT and KM.
Abstract: In this paper, a fuzzy algorithm and a fuzzy multicriteria
decision framework are developed and used for a practical
question of optimizing biofuels policy making. The methodological
framework shows how to incorporate fuzzy set theory in a decision
process of finding a sustainable biofuels policy among several policy
options. Fuzzy set theory is used here as a tool to deal with
uncertainties of decision environment, vagueness and ambiguities of
policy objectives, subjectivities of human assessments and imprecise
and incomplete information about the evaluated policy instruments.
Abstract: Over last two decades, due to hostilities of environment
over the internet the concerns about confidentiality of information
have increased at phenomenal rate. Therefore to safeguard the information
from attacks, number of data/information hiding methods have
evolved mostly in spatial and transformation domain.In spatial domain
data hiding techniques,the information is embedded directly on
the image plane itself. In transform domain data hiding techniques the
image is first changed from spatial domain to some other domain and
then the secret information is embedded so that the secret information
remains more secure from any attack. Information hiding algorithms
in time domain or spatial domain have high capacity and relatively
lower robustness. In contrast, the algorithms in transform domain,
such as DCT, DWT have certain robustness against some multimedia
processing.In this work the authors propose a novel steganographic
method for hiding information in the transform domain of the gray
scale image.The proposed approach works by converting the gray
level image in transform domain using discrete integer wavelet
technique through lifting scheme.This approach performs a 2-D
lifting wavelet decomposition through Haar lifted wavelet of the cover
image and computes the approximation coefficients matrix CA and
detail coefficients matrices CH, CV, and CD.Next step is to apply the
PMM technique in those coefficients to form the stego image. The
aim of this paper is to propose a high-capacity image steganography
technique that uses pixel mapping method in integer wavelet domain
with acceptable levels of imperceptibility and distortion in the cover
image and high level of overall security. This solution is independent
of the nature of the data to be hidden and produces a stego image
with minimum degradation.
Abstract: A 3.5-bit stage of the CMOS pipelined ADC is proposed. In this report, the main part of 3.5-bit stage ADC is introduced. How the MDAC, comparator and encoder worked and designed are shown in details. Besides, an OTA which is used in fully differential pipelined ADC was described. Using gain-boost architecture with differential amplifier, this OTA achieve high-gain and high-speed. This design was using CMOS 0.18um process and simulation in Cadence. The result of the simulation shows that the OTA has a gain up to 80dB, the unity gain bandwidth of about 1.138GHz with 2pF load.
Abstract: Roadways in Amman city face many problems consequent upon poor drainage systems. Evaluation tools are necessary to identify those roads needing improvement in their drainage system, and those needing regular maintenance. This work aims at evaluating drainage conditions in selected roadways in Amman city with the intent of identifying the problems encountered in their drainage systems. Three sites in the vicinity of Amman city have been selected and then inspected via several field visits to determine the state of their existing drainage systems and define the major problems encountered in these systems. The evaluation tool used in this study is based on visual inspection supported by photographs that depicted the defined problems. Following the field assessment, the drainage system in each road was rated as excellent, fair, good, or poor. The study reveals that more than 60% of the roadways in the selected sites were in poor drainage conditions, which lead to tremendous environmental problems. This assessment serves as a guide for local decision makers to help plan for the maintenance of Amman city roadways drainage systems, and propose ways of managing the associated problems.
Abstract: This study explores perceptions of English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) learners on using computer mediated communication
technology in their learner of English. The data consists of
observations of both synchronous and asynchronous communication
participants engaged in for over a period of 4 months, which included
online, and offline communication protocols, open-ended interviews
and reflection papers composed by participants.
Content analysis of interview data and the written documents listed
above, as well as, member check and triangulation techniques are the
major data analysis strategies. The findings suggest that participants
generally do not benefit from computer-mediated communication in
terms of its effect in learning a foreign language. Participants regarded
the nature of CMC as artificial, or pseudo communication that did not
aid their authentic communicational skills in English. The results of
this study sheds lights on insufficient and inconclusive findings, which
most quantitative CMC studies previously generated.
Abstract: ZnO nanocrystals with mean diameter size 14 nm
have been prepared by precipitation method, and examined as
photocatalyst for the UV-induced degradation of insecticide diazinon
as deputy of organic pollutant in aqueous solution. The effects of
various parameters, such as illumination time, the amount of
photocatalyst, initial pH values and initial concentration of
insecticide on the photocatalytic degradation diazinon were
investigated to find desired conditions. In this case, the desired
parameters were also tested for the treatment of real water containing
the insecticide. Photodegradation efficiency of diazinon was
compared between commercial and prepared ZnO nanocrystals. The
results indicated that UV/ZnO process applying prepared
nanocrystalline ZnO offered electrical energy efficiency and
quantum yield better than commercial ZnO. The present study, on the
base of Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism, illustrated a pseudo
first-order kinetic model with rate constant of surface reaction equal
to 0.209 mg l-1 min-1 and adsorption equilibrium constant of 0.124 l
mg-1.
Abstract: This paper proposes new enhancement models to the
methods of nonlinear anisotropic diffusion to greatly reduce speckle
and preserve image features in medical ultrasound images. By
incorporating local physical characteristics of the image, in this case
scatterer density, in addition to the gradient, into existing tensorbased
image diffusion methods, we were able to greatly improve the
performance of the existing filtering methods, namely edge
enhancing (EE) and coherence enhancing (CE) diffusion. The new
enhancement methods were tested using various ultrasound images,
including phantom and some clinical images, to determine the
amount of speckle reduction, edge, and coherence enhancements.
Scatterer density weighted nonlinear anisotropic diffusion
(SDWNAD) for ultrasound images consistently outperformed its
traditional tensor-based counterparts that use gradient only to weight
the diffusivity function. SDWNAD is shown to greatly reduce
speckle noise while preserving image features as edges, orientation
coherence, and scatterer density. SDWNAD superior performances
over nonlinear coherent diffusion (NCD), speckle reducing
anisotropic diffusion (SRAD), adaptive weighted median filter
(AWMF), wavelet shrinkage (WS), and wavelet shrinkage with
contrast enhancement (WSCE), make these methods ideal
preprocessing steps for automatic segmentation in ultrasound
imaging.
Abstract: A new approach for protection of power transformer is
presented using a time-frequency transform known as Wavelet transform.
Different operating conditions such as inrush, Normal, load,
External fault and internal fault current are sampled and processed
to obtain wavelet coefficients. Different Operating conditions provide
variation in wavelet coefficients. Features like energy and Standard
deviation are calculated using Parsevals theorem. These features
are used as inputs to PNN (Probabilistic neural network) for fault
classification. The proposed algorithm provides more accurate results
even in the presence of noise inputs and accurately identifies inrush
and fault currents. Overall classification accuracy of the proposed
method is found to be 96.45%. Simulation of the fault (with and
without noise) was done using MATLAB AND SIMULINK software
taking 2 cycles of data window (40 m sec) containing 800 samples.
The algorithm was evaluated by using 10 % Gaussian white noise.
Abstract: Telemedicine is brought to life by contemporary changes of our world and summarizes the entire range of services that are at the crossroad of traditional healthcare and information technology. It is believed that eHealth can help in solving critical issues of rising costs, care for ageing and housebound population, staff shortage. It is a feasible tool to provide routine as well as specialized health service as it has the potential to improve both the access to and the standard of care. eHealth is no more an optional choice. It has already made quite a way but it still remains a fantastic challenge for the future requiring cooperation and coordination at all possible levels. The strategic objectives of this paper are: 1. To start with an attempt to clarify the mass of terms used nowadays; 2. To answer the question “Who needs eHealth"; 3. To focus on the necessity of bridging telemedicine and medical (health) informatics as well as on the dual relationship between them; as well as 4. To underline the need of networking in understanding, developing and implementing eHealth.
Abstract: A water reuse system in wetland paddy was simulated
to supply water for industrial in this paper. A two-tank model was employed to represent the return flow of the wetland paddy.Historical data were performed for parameter estimation and model verification. With parameters estimated from the data, the model was then used to simulate a reasonable return flow rate from the wetland
paddy. The simulation results show that the return flow ratio was 11.56% in the first crop season and 35.66% in the second crop
season individually; the difference may result from the heavy rainfall in the second crop season. Under the existent pond with surplus
active capacity, the water reuse ratio was 17.14%, and the water supplementary ratio was 21.56%. However, the pattern of rainfall, the
active capacity of the pond, and the rate of water treatment limit the
volume of reuse water. Increasing the irrigation water, dredging the
depth of pond before rainy season and enlarging the scale of module are help to develop water reuse system to support for the industrial
water use around wetland paddy.
Abstract: Automatic segmentation of skin lesions is the first step
towards the automated analysis of malignant melanoma. Although
numerous segmentation methods have been developed, few studies
have focused on determining the most effective color space for
melanoma application. This paper proposes an automatic segmentation
algorithm based on color space analysis and clustering-based histogram
thresholding, a process which is able to determine the optimal
color channel for detecting the borders in dermoscopy images. The
algorithm is tested on a set of 30 high resolution dermoscopy images.
A comprehensive evaluation of the results is provided, where borders
manually drawn by four dermatologists, are compared to automated
borders detected by the proposed algorithm, applying three previously
used metrics of accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity and a new metric
of similarity. By performing ROC analysis and ranking the metrics,
it is demonstrated that the best results are obtained with the X and
XoYoR color channels, resulting in an accuracy of approximately
97%. The proposed method is also compared with two state-of-theart
skin lesion segmentation methods.
Abstract: In this paper a novel approach for generalized image
retrieval based on semantic contents is presented. A combination of
three feature extraction methods namely color, texture, and edge
histogram descriptor. There is a provision to add new features in
future for better retrieval efficiency. Any combination of these
methods, which is more appropriate for the application, can be used
for retrieval. This is provided through User Interface (UI) in the
form of relevance feedback. The image properties analyzed in this
work are by using computer vision and image processing algorithms.
For color the histogram of images are computed, for texture cooccurrence
matrix based entropy, energy, etc, are calculated and for
edge density it is Edge Histogram Descriptor (EHD) that is found.
For retrieval of images, a novel idea is developed based on greedy
strategy to reduce the computational complexity. The entire system
was developed using AForge.Imaging (an open source product),
MATLAB .NET Builder, C#, and Oracle 10g. The system was tested
with Coral Image database containing 1000 natural images and
achieved better results.
Abstract: The paper describes the futures trading and aims to
design the speculators trading strategy. The problem is formulated as
the decision making task and such as is solved. The solution of the
task leads to complex mathematical problems and the approximations
of the decision making is demanded. Two kind of approximation are
used in the paper: Monte Carlo for the multi-step prediction and
iteration spread in time for the optimization. The solution is applied to the real-market data and the results of the off-line experiments are
presented.